The Biggest Crypto News, January 2023

 Welcome to the Noft Games’ Cryptocurrency News blog post series where we’ll be sharing the best and most noteworthy NFT, Web3, crypto & Bitcoin news of the month. 

2022 was tough on us. But as we made it through the first twelfth of 2023, the crypto market showed some positive signs of life. Let’s dive right in and recap the latest cryptocurrency news (no FTX news alert!).    

Bitcoin Rally Starts?

⭐ Crypto today gives pretty much bullish vibes and the reason is Bitcoin’sblast to local highs. The top 1 digital asset went all the way up from the year opening at 16.5k to the month’s high of $24,167, according to CoinMarketCap. 

Bitcoin Price Chart / CoinMarketCap

⭐ Simultaneously, mining Bitcoin also gets more challenging than ever. According to Decrypt’s report, the difficulty of BTC mining is hitting new ATHs as we speak. Shall this trend continue, the profitability of mining activity remains questioned unless the BTC price compensates for the loss. 

⭐ The whole market shows signs of recovery as BTC is back at it again.

During the last week of January, the crypto market saw a $117 million-worth investment influx, the highest number since July 2022, according to the data by CoinShares. The absolute majority of funds appear to be invested in Bitcoin, while other popular altcoins such as SOL, ADA, and MATIC are also topping the list. 

⭐ Speaking of Bitcoin, the collaborative initiative by Ark and 21Shares to obtain legal rights to launch Bitcoin spot ETFs failed as SEC (Securities and Exchange Commission) turned down the proposal. Following the SEC's rejection to regulate the ground, institutions remain restricted from investing in Bitcoin.

⭐ At the same time, Arizona is pushing the bill to adopt Bitcoin as a legitimate means of payment. If passed, the precedent will be set of making BTC payments legal in Arizona, which may become the first American state to do so.   

And what about Ethereum?

⭐ As the whole market follows Bitcoin, Ethereum also enjoys decent gains, including over 200% increase in the number of holders, according to Crypto.com analytics.  

Source: Twitter

⭐ The hype is also supported by the upcoming Shanghai upgrade to the network in March. The move has been highly anticipated since 2020 when around 25 billion dollar worth of Ethereum were locked into the system. After the Shanghai update, the unlocking finally happens. 

⭐Meanwhile, the Ethereum team announced the successful test depoloyement of the update, meaning it goes as planned. However, Ethereum will not be able to implement the sharding system parallel with the Shanghai upgrade as was supposed. It means one thing – Eth remains in the spotlight for a long.    

NFT Market News

 January 2023 was exciting for NFT as the trading volumes started recovering.  

⭐Ethereum appreciation in price triggered the uptrend in Eth-based NFT sales. Per se, OpenSea closed the month with 306 ETH-worth Non-Fungible Token sales (around 500 million in USD) as opposed to November's 190 ETH (slightly over $250 m).   

⭐ Top NFT collections back in the game: BAYC and CryptoPunks NFT floor prices almost doubled crawling up to $108,000 since the November crash.

⭐ Mastercard stepped into a partnership with Polygon for building the “Mastercard Artist Accelerator” to help musicians navigate the NFT space, release NFT content, and ultimately encourage new ownership standards in the music industry. “Just jpeg” NFTs is no longer the case.  

Major Announcements for 2023

✴️Crypto startup Venly and Shopify teamed up to develop the minting app to sell Avalanche NFTs to the e-commerce platform customers without interacting with NFT marketplaces. The app in question is a no-code tool allowing the painless creation of NFTs and selling them in fiat to mass markets.    

✴️ Sorare, a free-to-play online football game, has finalized the deal with The Premier League. Sorare acquired the rights to launch tradeable NFT cards featuring players of the top football league that will be introduced for use in their fantasy game.  

Source: 1inch.io

✴️1inch Network hardware wallet is coming to the market. The device will reportedly have a competitive advantage over famous competitors such as Ledger and Trezor by introducing a multi-seed phrase feature to add another layer of security to multi-chain cold wallets. The design is also sleek! Users can now join the waitlist while the launch date is yet unknown.  

✴️ Amazon is set to be developing its own NFT platform that will mainly focus on NFTs for the gaming sector 

✴️ During Binance’s January AMA session, the company CEO and CPO spilled that Binance isn’t unlikely to roll out its own metaverse upcoming year.  

Web3 News

⭐ Soon after HTC released its metaverse headset, Bloomberg reported the tech giant Apple is also planning to launch its version of the XR device (the production title Reality Pro) soon this year.    

⭐ As per the report by Financial Times, Twitter is full-steam working on developing software to introduce fiat payments into the social platform and, expectedly, crypto payments.   

⭐Australia is known to be developing one of the most progressive frameworks regarding cryptocurrencies — the government’s CBDC pilot is set to launch by the end of the year. Meanwhile, the National Australia Bank (NAB) plans to contribute and launch stablecoins pegged to the Australian dollar on Algorand and Ethereum chains in 2023.   

AI is the New Trend, though 

So, Google is apparently feeling the pressure to challenge the Microsoft and ChatGPT companionship? The CEO of the company announced that users can soon expect the Artificial Intelligence-powered search engine to enter the competition. Shall we expect AI-related crypto projects to enter the rivalry? 

With that, Noft Games welcomes you to our Play-to-Earn NFT game to enjoy the rest of your week, while we’re watching out for more exciting news to share!